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FUTURE PERFECT:
5 STRATEGIES FOR
BUILDING THE LAW FIRM
OF THE NEAR FUTURE
Despite the best efforts of Nostradamus- and Edgar Caycetypes (and their apologists) to convince us otherwise, it’s
impossible to know the future. If ‘Back to the Future: Part
II’ had correctly predicted life in 2015, you’d be driving a
flying car, ordering food from Ronald Reagan and wearing
clothes that self-adjust for fit and dry themselves. Clearly,
none of that is happening right now. However, there
were a number of things that ‘Back to the Future: Part II’
got right. Which just goes to show that, even if we can’t
predict the future, we can make educated guesses about
the future, based on an extrapolation of prevailing trends.
Similarly, you won’t always be right, in making educated
guesses about law practice trends -- but, when you are,
you’ll have a leg up on your competitors, who will mostly
be entirely head-down, putting out the daily fires that arise
in law firm life.
PREDICTIVE PLANNING
What They Do. There is a business in predicting the
future of law firms, and consultants (like Richard Susskind
and Jordan Furlong) who are thoughtful about how
they make those predictions. Of course, their tactic in
combatting the unknowable future is just the same as
everybody else’s: they make educated guesses about
what will happen within the industry. Certainly, the
futurists stay up-to-date on law practice management
developments, which helps: when you’re extrapolating
from major trends, you have to know what the major
trends are, in the first place. Granted, that’s something
that the majority of lawyers do not do, and for obvious
reasons: they have full-time practices to run; full-time
consultants will necessarily be more deeply immersed in
the milieu of law practice management trends than will
the average mid-size firm attorney. Obviously it helps, for
planning law practice management strategies, to embed
yourself in the literature, even if you will be unable to do
that to the extent that the average legal futurist would.
What You Can Do. There is a simple trick to making
more accurate predictions, though; and, that is to make
predictions that are closer in time. If Robert Zemeckis
had made ‘Back to the Future: Part II’ in 2009, rather
than in 1989, the predictions made in that film would
likely have been much more accurate. While that’s
a far less exciting concept for a movie franchise, the
notion represents a more workable construct in the law
firm environment. Legal futurists tend to make their
predictions over an unending field of experience; you
can make more accurate predictions by reining yours
in. If trying to guess after what law practice will look like
twenty years from now yields too many ‘misses’, especially
as compared to the efforts you apply to making those
guesses, try predicting closer in time, in order to improve
your ‘hit’ percentage. In terms of business planning for
your law practice, focus on the next five years, with a
particular emphasis on the next year. This will encourage
you to make an annual review of your business practices,
and will (over time) generate a more focused approach to
planning over the course of decades.
The popular buzzword for the effect of long-range
business planning is ‘future-proofing’, which makes it
sound like you’re preparing for an unknowable hurricane.
That term also offers the impression that you can render
your law firm somehow impermeable to market changes.
While that’s not possible, the effect of intelligent business
planning is that you will be more likely to anticipate law
practice management trends, and be (better) prepared
(than your competitors) for the arrival of those trends to
the mainstream: you will already be taking advantage of
trends that other will have to adjust to, in the best case
scenarios. Even in cases where an unanticipated change
begins to affect your law practice, if you’re regularly
revisiting your future plans, your flexibility of response
will increase.
...
With that in mind, this white paper will concentrate
on five strategy arcs you should engage to move your
practice forward, into the (near) future. If your law firm
is able to upgrade its approaches in these five areas over
the next five years, you’ll be better prepared for 2020,
than you were in 2015:
SUPEREFFICIENCY
The majority of law firms still cling to hourly billing;
but, even for those that sell value billing to clients, time
is still likely to be logged at traditional intervals in the
back office, for the purpose of assuring that the value
proposition remains firmly in favor of the lawyers. In that
environment, it makes sense that efficiency is the prime
driver of revenue -- even if it is not always treated as such.
The equation is pretty straightforward: there are a limited
number of hours in the week (even for workaholics),
and the faster you can get through your work, the
more projects you’ll fulfill, the more effectively you can
apply value billing strategies, the more money you can
make. Smart managing partners are able to drive added
efficiency at their law firms using modern technology
and management techniques.
The prevalence of device-agnostic, cloud applications
means that all of your practice information is a secure
internet connection away. That massive flexibility means
that your law practice has become as mobile as you
are. What do you happen to have on you right now? A
tablet? Smartphone? Laptop? It doesn’t matter. You
practice is one touch away. While this sort of access
does present technical security questions, from a
practice management standpoint, by way of example,
managing a calendar is now as simple as setting up
a primary docket and syncing it across your relevant
programs. You can even tie in scheduling applications
through your website. What used to be a nightmare
scenario for lawyers (managing multiple calendars with
multiple people) has become a competitive advantage
for attorneys who will adopt and maintain the proper
collection of cloud-based tools.
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In a broader sense, project management is creeping into
law firm management, whether or not law firms realize
it’s happening. Cases are essentially projects managed
by lawyers, and the steps for managing certain case types
can be broken down into their constituent parts. Even
though lawyers like to think that each case is different,
unique and special (and so, requiring their peculiar
insight), that’s just not the case when consideration
is taken of the bulk of the tasks that go into working
up a client’s claim. If you’re a personal injury attorney,
there are probably fifteen steps you take in each case.
That means you can automate that percentage of your
process by developing a workflow, encompassing those
rote items, that can then be attached to each case of that
type. If you are inclined to break down case types within
the personal injury category, you are likely to be able to
also develop more specific workflows built off of your
primary list, e.g.--for motor vehicle accidents, slip and fall
cases, worker’s compensation claims, etc.
If you can automate your process, if you can make it a
rote exercise, you can devolve that aspect of your work
to your support staff, who can then access automation
technologies to assist them in their work. If the result of
your workflow creation and management is that you are
able to delegate work appropriately, you’ll achieve a sort
of lawyerly nirvana, in which you will be able to winnow
your contribution to case development down to the
creative process, the place where a lawyer truly shines,
where you do your deep thinking, and come to effective
resolutions of complex issues.
that you will embrace cloud tools to speed your
processes, while managing those processes more
COLLABORATIVE TECHNOLOGY
The preposition describing client and colleague
interaction in legal has changed from ‘at’ to ‘with’. Time
was, lawyers could direct information to colleagues and
clients, and observe the response chain building, in slow
motion. Now, interactive, social technologies mean
that dialogue arrives at a breakneck pace. Truly useful,
collaborative environments are the expectation, rather
than the outlier; and, demand for deeper interaction from
colleagues and clients will only build as we move forward
in time.
Collaborative technology will have a major effect on
the internal and external communications of law firms.
Technology tools that tend to increase efficiency,
which is so important to modern practice, can also
contribute to professional development and bolster
in-firm interactions. Take the example of a document
automation tool, which allows law firms to build targeted
documents from template documents and template
clauses. Those systems represent practical learning
environments for new associates who can observe
the development of documents and transactions,
within a system that offers ready interaction options for
communications with supervisors and staff. Many law
practice management and document management
systems now include client portals, so that clients can
play, too, in designated areas of the sandbox. Now,
clients can make real-time edits to their documents, ask
questions, and view changes, all within a firm-controlled
space that, from a usability standpoint, represent a major
upgrade over the traditional method of emailing back
and forth changes and more changes. Clients tend to
love modern law firm practices like these, because it’s a
more efficient use of their time, as well.
Internal law firm communications can be streamlined,
too. The problem with email is that it’s an open
environment, in the sense that anyone who has your
email address can send you a message, which represents
a potential distraction from whatever substantive item
you were working on at the time. Since most lawyers
publish their email addresses at their websites, that’s
a potential free-for-all. You truly never know what is
arriving in your inbox, or when. Certainly, it would
represent marketing suicide if you decided to pull your
email address from the public’s consumption; however,
that does not mean that you can’t segregate internal,
law firm communications, and remove those entirely
from the inbox, at least controlling that portion of
your daily interactions. There are many services that
represent closed internal communication models that
are alternatives to traditional email, including Slack and
FileVine.
communications, while making available user-friendly
collaboration environments for clients and colleagues.
NEW SERVICE DELIVERY MODELS
Even if the hourly rate retains its ascendancy, for-profit
law firms, in certain sectors, face rate pressure, from
‘low bono’ and limited assistance alternatives, as well
as from consumers armed with masses of information
derived from the internet, who have become savvier
than ever about choosing the right lawyer. There is
much consternation, in certain circles, about these
encroachments upon the traditional law firm service
provision model. However lawyers who apply efficiency
upgrades to their practices can produce work at higher
volume, in order to reach some of these challenges,
potentially by intelligently reducing prices.
Law firms can adopt their own low bono or discounted
rate structures for certain practices. For example, some
small business lawyers will offer rate reductions for (or
even free services to) start-ups, which may become
successful enough to afford the standard firm rates. The
answer to court-based limited assistance representation
is to develop limited scope services. Of course, that
requires an intelligent reformation of the scope provision
of your fee agreement. There are a number of alternative
fee structures available to law firms -- almost as many
as there are law firms. In order to appeal to modern
clients, who can recoil at open-ended fees, law firms
should adopt fee structures that meet the needs of their
particular target clients and target markets.
In the modern environment, the notion of revised service
delivery models touches the acquisition of clients, as
well. The proliferation of Q & A sites means that potential
clients can ask, and their suitor lawyers can answer,
general legal questions, which interactions may lead to
the formalization of attorney-client relationships. The
existence of branded networks means that lawyers can
access clients through marketing channels controlled by
behemoth corporations. These new-fangled marketing
channels will only continue to proliferate as we move
forward in time.
in new channels aimed by large conglomerations at
legal clients.
ANCILLARY BUSINESS MODELS
Law firms face a lot of competition, including from
non-law firms, who may snatch and hold leads, which
are only released for a price (potentially the price of
affiliation). It’s becoming harder and harder to make a
living just at the law. Of course, that’s not entirely a new
deal: smart attorney throughout history have engaged
in other, potentially more lucrative (and less heavilyregulated), side businesses. While a lawyer could literally
open any outside business she wishes, many attorneys
decide to establish a law-related business, a traditional
example of which is a real estate brokerage run by a real
estate attorney. That’s not to say, of course, that a lawyer
couldn’t open a cupcake shop or an apiary or a food
and music curation collective. Law-‘un’related business
options may nonetheless allow for cross-promotional
opportunities, so long as ethics considerations are
covered. Another advantage of developing an ancillary
business is that it may allow you access to a more
creative pursuit, when you’re normally wedded to
precedent. Having an outlet, and the ability to get away
from your practice, can increase your focus when you’re
back in it. If the future of employment is contracting for
income streams, lawyers developing multiples of outside
income opportunities fan out their risk allocation.
that you will open yourself up to possibilities related
to outside business opportunities, which can sharpen
your legal work by forcing breaks upon you.
PERSONALIZED MARKETING
The ‘at’ to ‘with’ shift within and without law firm
communications obviously extends to marketing the law
practice. It has not been all that long since lawyers were
first allowed to more aggressively advertise their services;
but even so, traditional marketing approaches are giving
way to a more personalized version of soft salesmanship.
It used to be that law firms could publish or broadcast
information via traditional, static channels, in order to
get the word out about what they did. These days,
marketing, including law firm marketing, is fraught with
interaction and opportunities for interaction. Potential
clients, referral sources, they expect approachable
vendors, including law firms. The stone-faced corporate
model, the Great and Powerful Oz strategy of making
potential clients and referral sources pass through various
challenges before getting a legitimate human response,
is dead.
Social media is one culprit; and, it’s probably true
that a modern law firm content marketing presence
requires at least some level of social media promotion
and interaction. Of course, personal interaction is
an expectation on social media, as well. Publication
must be supplemented with engagement. You must
inject something of your personality into your online
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presence to connect with modern consumers. It’s not
necessarily enough anymore that you’re a ‘Super Lawyer’.
It’s probably better to be a super lawyer with a super
personality. Responsiveness is often the dividing line
between acquiring a client, and losing one. Your level
of responsiveness can circumscribe your interactions via
social media, and through the sorts of Q & A websites
addressed above; but, it also means getting your
potential clients to real persons, and real interactions,
as soon as possible, especially when they’re ready to
engage a lawyer. If a potential client can’t get a hold of
someone in your practice, when they’re ready to hire
you, they’ll move on, at the speed of sound. If you can’t
pick up the phone yourself, and don’t have the staff to
do so, consider a reception service. Get potential clients
to contact you by crafting effective calls to action, and
placing them broadly.
It does no good, of course, to engage what-you-believeto-be successful marketing campaigns, if they’re not
actually working. It pays, therefore (and, quite literally)
to craft a well-built intake form, including questions
related to how particular clients found out about your
practice. Once you have collected intake data, you can
determine whether and which of your marketing efforts
have actually led to client retention, and at what rate.
This return on investment analysis can be supplemented
through the use of customer relationship management
(CRM) tools, many of which are free.
ABOUT ABACUS DATA SYSTEMS, INC.
Abacus Data Systems, Inc. provides single source, TurnKey Legal Technology Solutions, ranging from consulting
services, to the design, deployment, implementation and
management of local and virtual office environments,
leveraging cutting edge virtualization technologies. The
company’s ‘Total Care’ team provides US-based, hightouch services in support of their comprehensive suite of
case management, time, billing and accounting systems,
as well as their custom-tailored private cloud solutions.
Abacus Private Cloud™ (APC) supports Abacus’
continuing commitment to provide legal professionals
with an overarching portfolio of services, deep expertise
and robust security to help them innovate and realize
the benefits of technology. Designed to accelerate
the journey to the cloud and mitigate the risks posed
by Public Cloud and SaaS applications, APC addresses
today’s ever-changing threat landscape with robust
security and compliance policies, including two-factor
authentication, five tiers of physical, network and data
security, information handling and data privacy protocols
in accordance with NIST standards.
referral sources, be responsive when it’s time to close
business and analyze which of your personalized
marketing tactics are actually working.
Future Proof
Your Practice Today
Call 1-800-726-3339
for a Free Technology Readiness
Assessment!